


Agnosiophobia

by Syntax



Series: Writings of Xarxes [3]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Character Study, Gen, crossposted from tumblr: thespleenoflorkhan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 19:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18037322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: You don’t remember how you got here, not initially.  You remember declaring your intent to your masters.  You remember killing them in droves like the false gods they were, taking their strength and adding it to your own.  You remember feeling unstoppable.  You remember being unstoppable.  You remember Vahlok coming and feeling that feeling cease.





	Agnosiophobia

**Author's Note:**

> this was based on a post by @sassyfahliil on tumblr i saw a few days ago. basically, what if miraak didn't know how long he'd been in apocrypha? what if he didn't know everything had already been said and done, and he wasn't even a footnote in history?

You wake up to a world with green skies and paper earth.

You don’t remember how you got here, not initially.  Your head is swimming like the dark, webbed things you see lurking in the black waters of this realm.

You think it’s water.

You hope it’s water.

When the memories finally return to you, you scream.  You were so  _close_.  You came so  _far._   Everything you had ever wanted right in the palm of your hand, only for it all to slip through your fingers like powder snow.

You remember declaring your intent to your masters.  You remember killing them in droves like the false gods they were, taking their strength and adding it to your own.  You remember feeling unstoppable.  You remember  _being_  unstoppable.  You remember Vahlok coming and feeling that feeling cease.

A hand makes its way subconsciously to your belly.  You had expected to be brought down with shouts, and spells.  A grand confrontation befitting a god in mortal flesh.  In the end, you were defeated with something so simple as a dagger plunged in between your ribs by one you once considered a friend.

You draw the hand away from your side and examine it.  The leather is perfectly clean, as are your robes and the flesh underneath them.  An angry scar sits upon your skin, all that remains of what should have been a fatal wound.

You wonder if you’ve been healed.

You wonder if you’ve been killed.

You wonder where you are.

You suppose it doesn’t matter.

-

You have a sneaking suspicion of where you might be, considering the power you had abandoned your gods for shortly before renouncing them.  You have a suspicion, but the man in the woods had never struck you for the type to care so much about sea life.

Then again, he’d never struck you as the type for many of the things he’d done.

There are runes on the papers and scrolls that litter this land.  Books along the walls, pages on the floors.   You’ve perused quite a bit of them in the time you’ve wandered this world, but none of them contain a script you’re familiar with.

You remember learning to read as a boy.  It had been a difficult task then, even with an instructor to help you.

You wonder how difficult it will be now that you’re completely alone.

You don’t know how much time has passed since you first entered this place.  You’ve not felt hunger, or thirst, or the need to relieve yourself, yet you’re sure you’ve been here for at least several hours if not several days.  Does time not move at all in this place?  Do you simply not feel its effects?  Will you wander around in this place for years before finding a way to escape, only to see yourself returned to the very moment at which you had left?

Ha.  Unlikely.

Assuming you’re not dead, there’s a possibility that you’ve vanished from your homeland at the height of your power, and the loss of your person will create quite the vacuum to fill.  Assuming you are dead…  Well.  You had every reason to look into what has become of your land now that you’re not there to guide it.

You pick up one of the books with swirling script, flipping it open to a random page and scanning the foreign characters.  They look ridiculous.

You wonder how long it would take you to learn their meaning.

You wonder how much time you have here.

You suppose you only have one way to find out.

-

The words reveal themselves to you slowly.  There have been times where you’ve spent what you can only assume to be days or weeks thinking that you’ve made another sliver of progress only to find out that you mistranslated a single character and all your efforts since then must be redone.

You wonder if this is madness.

You wonder if you’ve earned it.

You try to ignore the feeling that you have.  The scar on your side aches.

You’re certain of where you are now, having argued and screamed at the empty air in a fit of psychosis for who knows how long before a familiar voice met your ears.  The woodland man is neither, nor is his home anything that you could have possibly expected.

You had asked him what happened to your kingdom.  What happened to Vahlok.    To your students.  Your people.

You had asked him what this place was, and why he brought you here against your will.

He claimed he did no such thing.  You had asked him to save you, he said.  You had asked him to help you.  Your wounds were such that you could not last long in the mortal plane without immediate treatment.

You had asked him if he gave you such treatment.

He claimed nothing at all.  You have not spoken to the prince of secrets since then, but you feel as if he has not left you alone just yet.

You wonder if he’s toying with you.

You wonder why you never realized it sooner.

You suppose you can’t help it now.  What’s done is done.

You resume your quest for knowledge.  The words come slowly, but there are some that you’ve learned to recognize quicker than others.

Dragon.  Skyrim.  War.  Victory.

No word of Vahlok.  No word of Solstheim.

No word of you.

You find characters along the pages that you learn to be numbers, and learn later still to be dates.  You don’t recognize the calendar.  No matter.  Whatever system these people follow means nothing to you—you’ve a suspicion that the prince of knowledge would not let something so mundane as time prevent him from finding what he seeks.  His sphere is to take that which he desires, and hoard it away for himself simply so that he can have it.

You wonder what had ever drawn you to such a creature.  In this aspect though, you cannot say you differ that much.

If you cannot ask for what you seek, then you will simply take it, as you have taken all other things that life has seen fit to withhold from you.  Whereas Hermaeus Mora seems content simply with the hoarding of knowledge, you have a specific goal in mind. You will devour these pages as you have devoured souls, and from even the smallest scrap of knowledge contained therein you will endeavor your way back home.

You will find out what has happened to your kingdom.

You will find out what has happened to Vahlok.

You will find out how long you were trapped in this place.

And you will find a way to escape.


End file.
